Don't wait for luck

At the ashram, we are growing a coconut grove at the foothills of the mountain. We are putting in a certain amount of input and it is coming out quite well. Before we bought this coconut grove, somebody else was living on it. Taking care of the coconut grove was his fulltime job and he was getting about seventy nuts per tree. We have been in it only for a short time now, and we are not even spending all our time with the coconut grove – it is just one of the little things that we are doing. But we are already getting more than a hundred nuts per tree. Now if the earlier owner comes and sees this, he will think we are just lucky.

Another man may be putting in ten times more effort but trying to grow a coconut grove on top of the mountain. He is getting no nuts. So you may be putting the same effort, but in what kind of situation, what kind of atmosphere, and what are the realities around you, all this must be considered. If you are smart, you will not try a coconut grove on top of the mountain; you will do something up there that I have never thought of.

If you are thinking of a coconut grove when you are on top of the mountain, even if you put in ten times more effort, you will still not get what I get because you are in different situation and in a different reality. The realities may not always be as starkly different as plains and mountains. They may be just subtly different. If you do not understand that, you will go nuts, but no nuts will come.

Life is like that. So don't depend on luck. By chance a few things happen. But if you wait for the chance, good things will happen to you only when you are in your grave because it may take its time. Even quantum theory says that if you try, you can actually walk through a wall once in a billion times because there is a pulsation of particles happening and you may find that gap and actually walk through the wall. It is just that before you reach that one billionth time, you would have a cracked skull. When you live by chance, you also live in fear and anxiety. When you live by intent and capability, it does not matter what is happening or not happening, you are at least in control of what is happening to you. It is a more stable life.